Las Marias
It all started with an idea born of love. The founders wanted a project that reflected how beautiful Mother Nature is and the impact you can have if your actions are based on “love”. This principle is the basis of their core values. In Kampura, love means treating the land, the people, the community and the environment with kindness.
They ensure that the cacao meet this quality before leaving their facilities. That's why they've implemented their own quality labs to ensure consistency from year to year. Their plantations are recognized as the best in the region. They have been awarded by the National Forest Institute (INAB) as the best agroforestry plantation.
Cahabon
The origin of ¨Cahabon¨ is named after the town where it comes from. You find Cahabon about 40 minutes away down a dirt road path of the town Lanquin where the famous Semuc Champey National Park is located.
The cacao is produced by small scale Q´eqchi farmers. The project focuses on food security for the community and cacao became a bi-product. This being said, the land is diversified and organic to feed the community and more. In collaboration with a local priest and a German retired couple, the origin of Cahabon is leading social and environmental projects in its region. It buy in direct trade to each farmers the wet cacao is is processed together by 'single origin' each cacao harvest. This means, you can trace the cacao back to every farming family. It pays in the highest rate of the country its wet cacao and supports hundreds of people.
Caoba
Caoba is a cacao origin deeply rooted in history, with evidence of indigenous presence on the Hacienda Rio Dulce farm for over a thousand years. The farm, officially registered under its current name in 1906, has been under the stewardship of the Bronson-Diaz family since the late 1970s. Over the years, they have reforested former pastureland, transforming the property into a thriving agroforestry system with 95% canopy cover.
Juan Bronson grew up exploring the Rio Dulce and assisting his archaeologist father in excavating Mayan sites. His deep connection to the land and a desire to combat deforestation led him to collect and plant heirloom cacao varietals from across Central America. Today, the plantation nurtures 26 different types of criollo and acriollado cacao.
Spring
Springs Cacao was named in a moment of astonishment. We were standing there, in a valley covered with a lush variety of trees: coffee, zapotillos, bananas, and so many others. An agroforestry dream.
By our side, Juan, grandfather in the family, told us there are 4 springs there, embedded in the delicious curves of this mountain jungle, at 400 m facing the Pacific coast. But there is more than one step to a true astonishment. Moments later– we couldn’t believe what we heard– Juan was explaining that he remained organic because he never had enough money to buy the fertilizers that are suggested as a norm of success in that region.
Entre Nubes
“Entre Nubes” means between clouds which is a reference to COBAN where FEDECAVERA, the organization behind this origin is located. The cacao in grown between mountains and clouds in the region of Alta Verapaz.
The organization supports over 33,000 farming families in a second level type organization. This means each farmers have a vote in their cooperative and each cooperative have a vote in FEDECAVERA.
The cacao comes from small-scale indigenous own farming land. produced in an organic and diverse way
Mama Amor
This cacao is harvested in the Suchitepéquez Mountains of the Guatemalan Pacific front: the largest area of cacao forests in Central America during Pre-Columbian times. For millennia, the art of agriculture and hybridization was mastered in these mountains.
Through generations of alchemy, this cacao’s flavor has been crafted to be fruity, acidic, rich in fats, and offer caramel bittersweet aromas typical to fermented ceremonial grade cacao.
Panan
“Panan” comes from the vocable “Pa Nana” which means “for the mother” from the Tz’utujil “Nana” for the mother or the woman space holder.
Neighbor to Chicacao the village of Panan was probably an ancient place of devotion to the sacred feminine, before colonization. The Name “for the mother” in an ancestral Cacao producing region lets us guess that in ancient times there may have been certain altars and ceremonies specially dedicated to feminin and motherly entities in the area. As it was often the case in Cacao forest in that region, where cacao was commonly associated with goddess figures.
El Cedro
Angel and Irma Yatz Xol live in the village of El Cedro, nestled in the mountains above Livingston on Guatemala’s Caribbean Coast. Of the Q’echi indigenous group, their grandparents arrived in the 60’s and 70’s to escape conflict in the highlands, where they have lived as subsistence farmers primarily from slash and burn corn.
Upon learning of the international value of cacao back in 2017, Irma took the initiative to fill nursery bags and buy seed for their first 800 cacao plants with the help of their five children, led by their eldest son Jayron. With the change in land use from slash-and-burn to cacao agroforestry, the Yatz Xol family notes an increase in their income.